Still In Translation
by Oliver Jasmine
Summary: Matthew was a step below hikikomori before he was drawn into the pokemon world. He now does odd jobs for a pokemon breeding center. Unclear where he wants his life to go from here, in a world where much is unclear, its still in translation.


Disclaimer- I don't own pokemon...

Necessary Short Backstory Summary

This takes place in Johto - the video game universe, not the anime. Matthew isn't a trainer, he's an 'apprentice' doing odd jobs for the Goldenrod Breeding Center. He rents pokemon to battle out in the world, always including a Korean manectric. Matt calls him Jelly because that's the closest thing to a word he could see in the characters for his name. Mechanics from the game, and more realistic elements mix at random here, meaning he gets jolted back to his reality whenever things feel too much like a game, or too much like normal life.

Please see the bottom of the page for a longer, less necessary explanation of the backstory.

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Still In Translation

25 Gloom

"Jelly, thunderbolt!" I called over the noise of the waterfall behind me. The manectric barked and shot a bolt of energy toward the offending gloom. It struck directly in the center of the gloom's petals and the wild pokemon let out a gurgling shriek before falling on its side. I fished a pokeball out of my pocket and threw it. "That's number 25! We can go back now."

I went to retrieve the ball when it appeared still. It was bothersome to use such weak pokeballs, but they stood out easily in the long grass. I reached down to grab the ball, my shoulder length blonde hair falling into my eyes. The ball blew up. One half smacked me right on my cheekbone. I cursed and kicked the gloom into the rock cliffs bordering the long grass to one side.

My cargo pants were still thoroughly wet from the trip up here, but my bare chest had dried. I had left the rest of my clothes and supplies back at the comparatively dry cave at the bottom of the waterfall.

Jelly went up and sniffed the gloom I had kicked just before it disappeared. The Buizel I had borrowed to get up here to this secluded field looked rather scared. It had probably never seen a human who dared hit a pokemon. I slightly doubted it had ever really seen a human. In this world, Johto, most trainers are playing a video game. The economy, the power, the entertainment, everything revolves around them. Even though they can't interact fully with this world, they rule it. Not quite all trainers are playing the game, but people who live here who become trainers have a much harder time of it. For example, I'm pretty sure the game doesn't even make you get out of bed. I had to actually walk from my apartment in Goldenrod to Olivine, take a ferry to Cianwood, and hike up to Safari Zone Gate. The trip took an entire day.

A flying pokemon? It's not as easy as that. There aren't many pokemon big enough to ride on while flying, and there's not that much less distance as the crow flies. Also, the view of clouds from above isn't worth my life when I pass out from hypoxia and can't hang onto the pokemon anymore.

I paced in the long grass for awhile, hoping for another gloom. The next pokemon to appear was a tauros. The mild brown of its coat was subdued compared to the overpowering blue and yellow of the manectric. It was at least twice the size of the dog pokemon, and looked more aggressive than the hordes of gloom we'd been picking off. Jelly stared it down, not flinching as the tauros lowered its head to charge. Buizel was hugging the leg of my pants, which were still drying from the trip up. Tauros charged. Jelly started to jump aside to dodge, but instead was hit midair. He was flung back and plowed into the grass, only a few feet from the river. He rose, howled and sprang for the tauros, aiming for its neck. The attack connected, but the bull quickly started thrashing around to get the wolf pokemon off. Jelly was getting shaken around like a rag doll. He let out an uncontrolled flurry of crackling electricity that all went into tauros. The tauros collapsed, Jelly let go of it and shook himself, as the tauros vanished. Jelly glowed briefly with energy.

I fished around in my cargo pants for my knockoff DS. It looked like your run-of-the-mill twenty dollar throwaway cell phone. I pointed it at Jelly and it generated his level, attacks, and legal name, an undecipherable mess of characters that I only knew were Korean because I had been told. "You leveled up. Sorry to make you fight so much without real training." He couldn't level up without knocking them out for experience... I'm pretty sure my kicking them unconscious also doesn't count.

Jelly kind of grunted an acknowledgment. The human language he knows best definitely isn't English, but we get by. Domesticated or trained pokemon, they form bonds with humans, that's what they do. We'll always manage to communicate, at least vaguely.

I started shuffling around in the long grass again. The sun was getting lower, it wasn't near sunset, but it wouldn't be long before it set behind mountains. A cool breeze over my bare chest made me shiver. I found myself wishing this could all be a little bit more like a video game than it was already. I caught the last gloom after fending off a few pidgeotto and oddish. Buizel had taken to gunning down a few pidgy with Bubblebeam, bored at being outside his ball for so long. I hadn't actually taken his ball up here with me - I'd left everything I could down at that cave at the bottom of the waterfall. It's really really tiring to travel upstream by clinging to an otter the size of a cat.

I shrank the pokeball containing the last gloom and put it in my pocket. I dreaded the idea of going back to Safari Zone Gate. At least there weren't that many people there. Most visited only for the day. There was only one inn for nontrainers, and camping could be unpleasant or downright dangerous. Trainers got the vast Pokemon Center, which was vast to handle trainers who were overwhelmed by the range in level and variety of the wild pokemon here.

I took out the one ultraball I had on me. "Jelly, return." The beam of red light engulfed him and drew him back inside the grey and yellow sphere. The red glow from the ball's button faded when he was inside. Just as if I were a trainer, just as if I were his trainer. "Buizel, can you Surf now?" I sat on the river's edge and double checked that all my pockets with the gloom were secure. Buizel hopped between my legs and let me get a secure hold on him. As we got back to the cave with my supplies, I wondered just what was wrong with me that going into a town was more frightening than traveling down a waterfall on the back of an orange otter.

I got into the cave and released Jelly again. His body glowed with sparks, illuminating the brown rock and the ladder up to ground level. I quickly moved the gloom to the relative security of my backpack. I decided to wait to change into my dry clothes when we were somewhere free of wild pokemon. As if on cue, a graveler appeared from the otherwise featureless brown rock. "Oh no! Jelly, get back." I pointed my DS/phone at it. Its level was in the forties - the manectric didn't stand a chance.

"Bui bui?" Buizel looked at the living rock curiously from the opening of the cave. His fur was shining, still slicked down with water.

"We can just leave the cave and come back and it'll be gone, there's no need to fight it." I tried to explain. I'm not sure how many pokemon notice the eccentricities of this world, especially since trainers won't tell them. Something about ruining suspension of disbelief.

"BUI!" it cried, and a torrent of water from outside was drawn in and crashed into the graveler. Buizel had attacked with Brine. The graveler vanished, and Buizel started glowing. Brightly, not the brief power from leveling up.

"Um, you're really not supposed to, well, please don't, um..." I stammered rapidly, and was ignored just as rapidly.

An orange otter as tall as me stood where Buizel had been. "Floatzel," he chirped, looking very pleased with himself.

"I hope I don't get in too much trouble for letting a rental pokemon evolve." I realized something, and looked to my supplies, all of which (including my spare clothes) were soaked with icy salt water.

Floatzel saw the drenched backpack and looked sorry. "Float..." He picked up the bag and put it on easily.

Then I realized something else. "You could've turned into that, but I had to go up a waterfall on puny Buizel?"

I withdrew Jelly and I started climbing the ladder in darkness. But Floatzel climbed faster, and pressed his way between my body and the ladder until I was forced to ride on his shoulders. It was easy, and my legs were going numb from cold, so I let him carry me. He ducked down so I could get though the entrance safely. It was really sunset now, and the sky was brilliant orange and pink. The tall grass shrugged free of the mountain's deep shadows, reflecting the warm light. Jelly came back out and led the way, still glowing, so the pitch black of wilderness never reached us. As we crossed the bridge, I looked down at the waterfall I had just navigated. It must have been a 5 story drop from this bridge to the bottom of that waterfall.

Pokemon really are incredibly powerful, I thought. Here, trainers have everything, money and power, and eternal ownership of their pokemon, or at least their name. I wish I could adopt Jelly, I wish it more than anything. I was startled out of reflection by a flock of pidgy crossing over the deepening purple clouds. Floatzel avoided the long grass in the next clearing, plodding along carefully as Jelly led. Since our path threaded alongside a sheer cliff, Floatzel held onto my legs as I hunched further around his head. He sensed my fear, and tried to nuzzle my face but wound up pressing his head into my chest. Only the parts of me touching him felt warm, so I didn't mind. As we entered the town, it was dark and peaceful; paper lanterns and torches lit empty stands as their owners went to dinner. Floatzel let me down in front of the inn, a two-story wooden building that looked about a century old compared to the pokemon center.

I walked in and held back a whimper at the AC, it was summer even though I had spent the day cool and wet. A young woman in her 20s looked up from the reception desk. "I'm sorry, you're not allowed in here without a shirt. Oh, it's you - Matthew, right? Didn't you have a buizel this morning?"

She caught sight of the soaked bag Floatzel was carrying. "Did you try and surf on your buizel?" she broke out laughing. "Oh man, just because trainers can do it doesn't mean its a good idea!"

I shifted uneasily and took my bag back from Floatzel. "Bui - Floatzel is a powerful pokemon, he helped me a lot out there." I said, looking at my feet.

"Heh, just kidding, just kidding..." she glanced down at her records. "You're an apprentice pokemon breeder; its an honest mistake. I'm sorry, Matthew. there's a washer and dryer at the end of the hall on the right."

I murmured a thank you and fled for my own room. A pretty young woman like that talked to me, and I wasn't even wearing a shirt! Floatzel returned to his ball. Jelly followed me diligently as I changed into fresh clothes and threw my others and backpack into the wash. I took a warm shower, taking my time before contacting my boss of sorts. This was the hardest job I had ever done for the Breeding Center. I'd thought it would be fun - after all, Safari Zone Gate is the smallest settlement in Johto, and it's supposed to be a getaway, a tourist destination. What it is, is a death trap of evolved wild pokemon, caves, and torturous long hikes!

I turned on the computer and opened up my email. The job was, an environmentalist group in Kanto had started to worry about the genetic diversity in a particular route's gloom. They wanted 25 gloom to introduce from Johto, specifically another group of gloom that were reproductively isolated. This is how I was stuck getting gloom from a field down a cave, up a waterfall, and across a river from civilization, as opposed to the safari zone. I'm not sure how pokemon reproduce in the wild. They seem to constantly appear from thin air in long grass, at a set level range. I'm not sure to what extent genetics even exist in pokemon if the majority look exactly the same. I try not to think about it too hard. I shot him back an email about the 25 gloom and Buizel evolving. I would have to return to the breeding center in Goldenrod to hand them over to be transported to the client.

The breeding center was on a different network than the storage system trainers use. That's because its the one breeders use, the ones who sell pokemon to trainers. There must be some pretty crazy complicated laws keeping the world from being overrun with 'cute' or 'rare' pokemon like eevee. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that no matter how many crazy unnatural species of pokemon are released into the wild, nature resets itself to the same maximum 5 different pokemon per area. My jobs generally involve fetching pokemon with specific attacks for breeders, or delivering pokemon to nontrainers. It's less mind bending than being an environmentalist here.

Some trainers realize the insanity of 'releasing their pokemon to the wild' and instead, leave their pokemon from other regions with breeding centers. They're docile trained pokemon, usually lent out to nontrainers for traveling.

By the time my clothes were all set, I had bought a bag of oddish jerky for me and the pokemon. Is oddish jerky vegetarian? Is it one of those things man is not meant to know? We ate on the rug next to the window in my small single bed room. I quickly realized why people weren't really supposed to let the rental pokemon evolve. Floatzel ate half of everything, being twice my size. I wound up giving most of my share to Jelly since he had worked so hard.

In bed, I looked out at the moonlight. The same man in the moon as my home world. I hate stories where the main character gets transported to an amazing other world just to realize they want to go home. I don't want to return. I was scared of school, scared to go outside during the day, and a total failure to my parents. Now I have a really cool job traveling around, always somewhere where no one knows my name. I'm only able to travel because there's no one I used to know here. It feels much safer, always being anonymous like this. I was a hermit before I got here, and too ashamed to go back to school, or to take the risk to make friends. I had left everything behind, and was too paralyzed in guilt to get it back. I thought I'd be bullied if I started going out in daylight again, or went back to school. People would hate me if they realized I'd been hiding in my house for 6 months, only to be occasionally dragged out at night with my younger sister. But in truth, I was completely forgotten, the world had kept going without me. So one night when I realized this, I took my latest ineffective anxiety medicine (it'll take a few weeks to start working normally my ass) and fell into the deepest sleep I'd had in months. When I woke up, I could feel tears dried onto my face, but my pillow was perfectly dry. I was in my apartment here in Johto, above the Goldenrod Breeding Center. I was sucked into a game... Honestly I'd prefer to be in Animal Crossing, but I don't look existential miracles in the mouth.

Anyway, apparently it's not unheard of here, the yanked in from another dimension thing. A lot of aspects of this world work out great for me. School is only required until 10, when kids could become trainers, so I didn't have to hide from school anymore. No one knows me so I didn't have to hide that I'd been a hermit. I got my job and apartment with the breeding center through a group trying to keep the dimensional imbalance thing hushed up. I'm still uneasy with people, but really, I'm free here. I can even travel, and look at the sky in the daytime, clouds are amazing. I never looked upwards when I was in my old world.

I let my hand rest on Jelly's bristly yellow fur. I don't want to go back, I have what I need here, a bond that doesn't need words. I drifted easily to sleep.

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So, if you want me to continue, please review. Do I need to put more effort into describing pokemon, or can I assume people have them all memorized? Personally I never memorized the Sinnoh ones, except some of the cooler looking ones (buizel was one of the best looking ones in Sinnoh, the turtwig line is cool too once you get past the terrible names)

Longer Less Necessary Backstory Explanation

I'm not Japanese. For Matthew, "almost a hikikomori" means the UK and American milder equivalent of it. This manifests as school anxiety, mixed with agoraphobia (fear of wide open places and crowds, the opposite of claustrophobia), and in some cases autism/extreme shyness. In the US/UK its not unusual for a previously ignored anxiety disorder to present itself as school anxiety and many severely withdrawn adolescents have an autism-spectrum disorder. Why write about this instead of doing the order of magnitude more research it would take to write about the Japanese version of a teenage hermit, let alone do so with any cultural sensitivity? Because I'm American, and after reading about school anxiety and such, I thought doing a POV from the American variation was perfectly worthwhile. Unlike hikikomori which is a serious issue (although actually kept pretty underground inside Japan) American teens like this are perfectly invisible. They kinda have to be or social services would insist it was the parents' fault that they can't get a panicking kid to attend school. Also, many of these kids are very good at school, and made their families very proud while hiding their problems. If such a child develops an anxiety disorder, or it becomes clear they're autistic spectrum, then the parents have a lot to deal with themselves too. In realizing they pushed the kid too hard, and/or realizing how much the kid managed to hide. My reasons for using this POV are to fight the mental health anti-stigma, and portray the often-ignored issue. That said, that isn't the only thing in this story; if it were it would just be really lousy literature about a neurotic boy.

Each installment will be Matthew getting through one job. I'm not sure what direction I'll be taking this, what aspects of this world to explore. It will update weekly. I haven't written fanfiction in I don't know how many years. Lets see how it works out.

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Reviews and feedback much appreciated.


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